Pulitzer Prize winner and German-photojournalist Karsten Thielker, 52, started his career as a freelancer travel photography in Berlin and later got sucked into being a war photojournalist after covering the then Yugoslavian war.

Between 1990 and 1996, Thielker worked for the Associated Press, and covered war and conflict in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda and Chechnya.

It was during this stint that he was sent to Rwanda on assignment. He knew little about the country and was shocked to find himself in the middle of one of the world's most gruesome events—the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.

His picture of Rwandan refugees carrying water in a camp in Tanzania won him the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1995.

His coverage of the 1994 genocide traumatised him and he never visited Rwanda even after the war ended.

In fact he settled back in Berlin, Germany and founded and curates the Berlin Photo Edition, as he engage in his first love, street photography.

This April, he returned to Rwanda for the first time in 25 years, on a five-week personal mission to understand how far the country has come since the genocide, and to take part in the Kwibuka25 commemoration.

He toured the country taking pictures of people’s daily lives and conducted a public presentation of his past and present photography at the Kigali Centre of Photography. He is married with two children.

He spoke to Andrew I.Kazibwe.

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It’s has been 25 years since you worked in Rwanda. How long had you been thinking of returning here?

I always think about the places where I have been during the wars and plan to go back, to see how the people are carrying on with their normal lives.

Do you refer to yourself as a war photographer?

No. I only worked with Associated Press for five years, but first I covered local sports and politics in Germany, then in 1991 I branched to conflict coverage as the Yugoslavian civil war erupted, which was my first experience of war.

Once you show an interest in covering conflict, then you are often assigned more of the same jobs, and when they are successfully accomplished, they become routine assignments.

What was your experience in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide?

I never worked alone. I was always with a friend of mine, who was then working with Reuters, and we travelled together after I arrived on April 9, 1994.

I recall, it was also the time that South Africa was holding elections and the AP headquarters in New York was in charge of supervising assignments from Rwanda. That is how I got most of my work published worldwide at that time.

What was your reaction when you were asked to come to Rwanda? Was it just another usual assignment for you?

It is never usual. No war is a usual war. My girlfriend and I talked about it. We were living in Frankfurt, Germany then and both of us had no idea where Rwanda was on the map.

I took up the job anyway. When I arrived here, it was just chaos, which didn’t make it easy for us to work.

How is it working for a news agency?

There is a lot of pressure in agency photography. Everywhere in the world, they count the daily publishing of pictures, and the media houses that used it.

But this changes, because a lot changes every day, and so do pictures that back up a story, which is permanent pressure.

In your line of duty back then, what were the challenges?

It was risky. You didn’t know who was on the next checkpoint, who was your enemy or friend. So you basically had to rely on the United Nations convoys to get from one point to another.

You could not move alone inside Kigali, even when one wished to, because it was so dangerous.

As a person who has always been behind the camera, when covering wars, have you ever faced any censorship on which picture to take or file?

It started with the war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995.

In 1993, I took pictures of dead children in a mortuary and the AP photo editors first rejected them. Later Time Magazine published the pictures, which was the first time I realised how images become more brutal.

Back in Rwanda too, we were sending these gruesome images, but again I don’t think they realised what was going on. But to me, I send what I see exactly, so the rest is up to the editors to decide.

So what do you think of the current state of Rwanda?

We didn’t have a time for sightseeing back then. This is the first time I am realising how the city is structured.

It’s a great thing returning to on what was in the past, then making friends today with people here.

Following this visit, are you planning on holding any more projects as an independent photographer?

As my children are almost grown up now, I have more time to focus on more stuff and I think can do more.

I am planning to combine my visit to Rwanda with a visit to my nephew, who also turned 25 years old this year.

I will take pictures of Rwanda and of him and compare the changes since the last time I captured images of both him and this country in 1994.

How has commercial photography and photography for pleasure been affected by changes in society?

Street photography as a career is getting harder because of the individual rights of images and the fear of people.

But I think that documenting the normal lives of people for the sake of a society’s history is worse today than before.

There is only commercial and advertising, while images of a normal basic life with funny human moments are forgotten, since they aren’t captured anymore.